March 27, 2015

The release is the second and final beta in the Ubuntu 15.04 development cycle and will be followed by a Release Candidate build on April 16, ahead of the final release on April 23.

Beta 2 is of particular interest as it is the first milestone release that the regular Unity-using version of Ubuntu takes part in.

What’s New in Ubuntu 15.04 Beta 2
Remember that Ubuntu 15.04 (Vivid Vervet) is a 'maintenance release' and will be largely similar to the 14.04 LTS and 14.10 releases made last.

Bug fixes, polish and small usability improvements are the Vivid Velvet's calling card. Even the most significant change to take place in Ubuntu for a few years, the move to SystemD as the distribution's init system, is largely imperceptible.

A switch in the System settings > Appearance > Behaviour allows menus to go back to the old behaviour

The Dash, HUD and logout/shutdown dialog now show up correctly over fullscreen windows, and minor adjustments to the animations on login and logout should make for a faster startup and shutdown experience.

Compiz 0.9.12

The well-worn Compiz window manager gains a much-needed fix from nVidia that solves issues of blank or black windows for users with the Nvidia proprietary driver enabled.

Compiz now supports the MATE desktop fully, complemented by a refresh of the gtk-window-decorator for Gnome2 support.